SO TSU ZEN
by arelissa
Summary: The thin stitches that kept him together were straining, stretching at the edges. And this girl, with her words like silver scissors was slowly, ever so slowly snipping them away, one by one. Snip, snip, snip.  HitsuxOC
1. 000: Apophasis

_**Important Notice: **_

This story is currently being re-vamped/re-written completely for the NaNoWriMo and will be put up again after it is finished.

Until then, here's a sneak peak into the newer version of the story:

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**SO TSU ZEN**

a bleach fanfiction

written by _**Cherry**_

original story by _**Tite Kubo**_

**Prologue**

Apophasis

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_**Opening Theme:**__ "Sky High" The Gospellers

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"_Fujiwara Saya of the 5__th__ Division. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Hitsugaya-taichou." She'd seemed flustered, strained even, but he'd chosen to ignore it. _

"_I'm here upon Hinamori-fukutaichou's orders... She said that there's been a lot going on in this town recently, and that one more scout to handle all the little things would make it easier for those of higher rank to do their job without all the inconsequential skirmishes here and there... so..." She'd recited it as if it were a speech, prepared and memorized in verbatim. He'd disregarded her abnormal nervousness for inexperience and set aside the feelings of unease that had clawed their way up his spine. _

_He shouldn't have. _

_Maybe then, he would have actually completed his mission. Maybe then, he could have avoided all this needless heartbreak. Maybe then, he wouldn't have fallen in... _

Her striking resemblance to Hinamori was the hardest punch to the kisser he'd ever experienced. Sometimes he wondered if Hinamori had sent her here just to punish him, but disregarded that thought immediately every time. She was too soft, too gentle, too _nice_ to do that to him.

Being his 'co-worker' on this mission, Hitsugaya had already resigned to the fact that every living moment - figuratively speaking of course - spent with this girl was going to be gut-wrenching and razor sharp.

He was correct.

Two weeks into the mission and Fujiwara had already attached herself to him, parasitic, almost, but he was being harsh. Hitsugaya didn't mind her presence, far from it, it reminded him - perhaps a bit too much - of the watercoloured days spent with Momo under giant fig trees, spitting out melon seeds. If he had to name one thing he cared for least about this new girl, it would have been her eyes. Distant, cold, glassy even. As if the life had been sucked out of her whole and she was just this _shell_ of what he assumed was once a real girl.

And it was precisely that which he _hated_ about her, but cherished above all else. _Just like... Momo_.

It was like someone somewhere had sent him a time-machine, and was now allowing him to go back and correct all his mistakes. But, deep inside his saran-wrapped heart and bone-china ribcage, he knew it was all just a big, fat, lie he was repeating to himself over and over.

"Hinamori-fukutaichou told me that you liked manjus." He flinched. Talk about a double-whammy. 'Hinamori' and 'manjus' in the same sentence.

The thin stitches that kept him together were straining, stretching at the edges. And this _girl_, with her words like silver scissors was slowly, _ever_ so slowly snipping them away, one by one. _Snip, snip, snip_.

"She said that when you two were little, your grandmother would make them for you."

_Snip._

"And that you'd always offer her the last one, even though you really loved them."

_Snip_.

"And," she laughed here, "that she'd never take it but you'd force her to eat it anyways." She laughed again.

_Snap._

Hitsugaya stood up, dusting off his dark-washed jeans and shirt. He cleared his throat. Fujiwara looked up, eyes boring straight through his skull. Hers was the only gaze that he could not bring himself to meet. Hers and Hinamori's... but then what was the difference? He shook himself. _Of course_ there was a difference. Momo was Momo and this... well... this girl was just... _this girl._

Another chill slid down his spine. He pushed it away.

_Maybe if he'd followed his gut feeling back then, he could've gotten away when he'd still had time.

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_**Ending Theme:** "Please Stay With Me" YUI

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_**More chapters coming after NaNoWriMo ends. :3 **_

_**Until then, review? **_

_**-Cherry**_


	2. 001: Toil and Trouble

**Cherry: Here's the first chapter, after much deleting and revising and re-editing and whatnot. Ugh... I need a beta, anyone wanna offer? I would love you forever!

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**SO TSU ZEN**

a bleach fanfiction

written by _**Cherry**_

original story by _**Tite Kubo**_

**Chapter One**

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

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_**Opening Theme:**__ "Sky High" The Gospellers

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_

It was a quiet night, silent almost, and patrol could not be more boring. Not even the wind bothered to blow. It was nights like these during which Hitsugaya would allow his mind some much-needed rest-time. Delicate little tendrils of thought began to float about his consciousness, wandering through the translucent liquids of his brain, resting in the crevices. They brushed against his nerves, only leaving behind slight inklings of thought, half-formed images and possibilities.

_Whoosh_.

Hitsugaya spun around. Silence greeted him with open arms. His right hand was poised over the hilt of Hyourinmaru, fingers twitching to find their place on the wrapped handle. His eyes narrowed into careful slits, glinting despite the oncoming gloom. _What was she doing so close to him?_

"H-Hitsugaya-taichou!"

"This isn't your area to cover." His voice conveyed no emotions, none at all. Empty words echoed through an even emptier night. He wasn't even irked at her, his mind was too far gone for that.

It was the flash in her eyes that pulled him back. And all of a sudden, he stood at attention, frown creasing his forehead deeper than before. _What was that?_

"O-oh... well I finished early and thought I'd... see if you needed any... help..."

_Distaste_.

Ice crept over her words, weak as they were. Fujiwara shook them off quickly and bowed low, uttering a hurried apology and saluted before dashing off again. Watching her disappear into the darkness, Hitsugaya released his Zanpakutou. He turned and was just about to take off again before the very same ice that had coated her words froze him to the spot.

_He had never noticed her presence_.

Frantically, he reached out with his mind, eyes sliding shut so as to keep his concentration. Small clusters of lights appeared before his mind's eye, some brighter than others. Kurosaki's, his friends, Urahara Shouten, Matsumoto, and... nothing. Or at least, nothing else that felt even remotely familiar. He pushed further, widening the boundaries of his inner map, skating over the projected landscape. He found nothing.

The world shattered as he reopened his eyes. The moon and stars were too bright, but their light quickly leaked from his retinas and allowed him to see once more. The houses looked the same, the tiny dots of windows remained unchanged. But the whole scene felt colder, stranger, unfriendly-like. He scanned the terrain one last time and felt nothing.

Something dripped into the water. The surface rippled.

Hitsugaya paused mid-step and looked around. Another drip, and another, another, drip, drip, _drip_. Northeast, and then keep going. Through the woods, the branches, the sleeping leaves. No birds flew, no insects sang. The place was quiet. Hitsugaya landed between two branches, for once grateful for his small form and those extra hours he'd used to hone his reiatsu control. No one need know of his presence just yet.

Below him, a warehouse stood amidst a forest of other abandoned buildings, surrounded by a faint orange glow. It was humming. Hitsugaya crouched low between the branches, eyes piercing through the darkness for any movements. Not even a minute passed before he found one: Kurosaki Ichigo.

A wry grin wet the little Captain's lips as he watched the Substitute Shinigami walk towards the warehouse with all the flamboyance of a flamingo during mating season. His brows furrowed as the teen paused in front of the barrier, raised a hand and seemed to merely _brush_ the humming, glowing material apart before stepping inside. Hitsugaya stayed put. Prudence was friendly at such times.

It wasn't the fact that the bright-haired teen had just entered this very mysterious building that ate away at Hitsugaya. No, it was that no matter how he tried, Hitsugaya could not even grasp a single thread of reiatsu from the building despite it's obvious outer protection. As he pondered these all-consuming thoughts, another movement snagged the edge of his vision.

The figure was smaller, much smaller, than Kurosaki had been, and quite a bit more dainty... no... _stealthy_. The figure slid through the shadows as the nonexistent wind would have, slipping from one spot to the next, no sounds and... _no presence_. Hitsugaya reached out, cautiously, but even at such a close distance, the figure, like the warehouse, held no signs of spiritual power yet he was sure that was not the case. As the figure sulked towards the warehouse, they passed under a patch of clear moon light and Hitsugaya almost tumbled out of his tree.

Fujiwara Saya was padding her way towards the entrance of the warehouse. She stopped three steps from the glowing snow-globe and lifted her head. Her eyes caught his and it held. A flash of that same _something_ he'd seen before echoed between them, shaking and shivering in the air. The wind chose this moment to send a wave, stirring up every leaf in every tree. Dark green washed over his line of vision and whispers rose around his ears. Whispers of branch on branch, silent lips mouthing forbidden words, razor tongues slicing the night into sections. Him, Karakura, and whoever happened to be inside that snow-globed warehouse.

By the time he regained his gift of sight, Fujiwara was nowhere to be found. And, although he knew it a mote point to try and search for her reiatsu, he did it anyways. It came up nil, as he thought it would. Hitsugaya's first instinct was to inform Matsumoto and have her head over immediately, but decided against it only moments later. Going to fetch her was out of the question, and sending a message to her in any form would give away his position to the people inside that warehouse, because he was sure that while he couldn't see them and whatever they were doing behind those walls, they could see him fairly clearly. _If_ he gave them a reason to.

So he would wait.

The wind troubled him no more for the rest of the night. Hitsugaya waited so long that he'd started measuring the hours by the progress of the moon across the sky. Full moon tonight, maybe that had something to do with all these strange things happening. Liquid Mercury dripped steadily from the clouds, soaking into the earth below, spreading poison through Mother Nature's veins.

"... morrow... yeah shut up about that, would you? I still kicked your little ass at the end didn-"

"Shh... quiet down..." Fujiwara. She glanced up at him again; he was sure she knew. There was no question in her gaze, only _distaste_. It disappeared in a flash. They disappeared. The wind picked up though he couldn't _feel_ it against his skin as he should have. Vaguely, Hitsugaya wondered what the hell he was doing in a tree before sleep pressed a final kiss to his forehead.

Voices spoke to him through veils of plastic. They crinkled with every syllable and cracked with every word. He couldn't make out what they were saying. But then... he figured he didn't want to know anyways. He was too tired, too sleepy, much too ready to _shut down_ to care.

He opened his eyes but even that was covered in a thick layer of plastic. Translucent plastic, layers and layers of it. It felt as if someone had wrapped his entire head in a bag, and then put saran-wrap around that. He couldn't breathe.

A man with painfully straight-cut hair, and teeth just as neat, looked down on him. A girl with pigtails, a pissy expression, and a bright red jersey in his peripheral vision. Other figures, more vague, something blond, and green, and... pink. Hitsugaya closed his eyes and tried to draw breath. He found it easier thought than done.

"Give him another round, looks like the first one wasn't strong enough," straight-fringe-and-teeth said over his shoulder. Pigtails huffed and sat back, scuffing the ground with her sandaled feet.

"Alright, but it'll hurt..." A familiar voice, but somehow... not. He tried not to think to much; his brain was starting to pound itself against the insides of his skull. Another gust of wind blew over and he thought no more.

Saya shealthed her Zanpakutou with a click. Cold scales wound their way up her arms and around her neck. She could still feel the poisonous words in her breath. Saya swallowed, tongue dry.

The Vizards around her were regarding the unconscious body on the ground with faint interest. A captain, no less.

_Hitsugaya Toushirou_, the object of Aizen-sama's unhealthy side-obsession. Gin-sama seemed more interested in his large-breasted leiutenant than the Captain himself, but they came as a box-set; that pleased him even more.

"Are you sure that was a good idea?" Ichigo was scratching the back of his head, staring at the lifeless form of the 10th Division Captain currently lying on the ground. Shinji grimaced and reassured Ichigo that it would make things a hell of a lot easier in future if the little Captain was kept in the dark for as long as possible. Hiyori only huffed her impatience with the subject and stomped off, still irked about her defeat at the Strawberry's hands.

Saya closed her eyes and shuttered her ears from all the uselessness flowing from their mouths. Sand rushed over her thoughts; white sand. It grated against her skull, etching the words of her King deeper and deeper into the marrow between her bones. _Kurosaki-san is to reach his highest potential, make sure of that. Oh... and see if you can't make any headway with the little Taichou. It would be an... _interesting_ sideshow_.

He'd grinned. She'd bowed. And here she was.

Her fingers absently traced the shapes engraved into Kobasen's hilt. Tangles of coils and intricate pattternings of scales, all different coloured and seemed to shift in the changing light. Fangs that snapped at stray strands of memories, teeth that sunk themselves eagerly into waiting dreams.

Saya wondered if there was anyone anywhere with a power quite as horrible as her's.

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_**Closing Theme: **__"Please Stay With Me" YUI

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**Cherry: Alright, please review~ Comments, questions, critiques and whatnot... everything is welcome. Especially WELL thought out comments/critiques/etc. I love them to death **

**Oh yeah, PM me if you want to beta, or know someone who's a good beta so I get a hold of them. I NEED a good beta... desperately. No, really, I'm begging here. XDD **


	3. 002: Looking Glass and Crystal Ball

**A/N:** I have officially moved accounts, but since I didn't want to re-up this story on the other one, I'll continue it on this account until it is finished.

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**SO TSU ZEN**

a bleach fanfiction

written by_** Cherry **_

original story by **_Tite Kubo _**

**Chapter Two**

Through Looking Glass and Crystal Ball

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_**Opening Theme:** "Sky High" The Gospellers _

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_White. Just white. That one, solid, immovable expanse of colour. _

_It's been such a long time since this dream had come... I'd almost missed it. So peaceful... so peaceful... _

There was no light spilling through the windows, no birds serenading to the morning outside, only darkness. Darkness and stars; the moon had already set. It was that time between times, world between worlds, when the moon has gone and the sun hasn't risen, and dawn has yet to shift the sleeping clouds.

Hitsugaya raised a hand before his eyes and studied it. Five prominent fingers, a bit rough and calloused, but whole and definitely solid. So, he was no longer dreaming.

He sat up.

_Something_ tugged at his conscious mind, trying to pull him down to the unconscious again. He resisted. It tap-danced around his milk-white hair, rustling the fringes and blowing in his ear. He swatted it away impatiently and slipped out of bed. The deck below him swayed in an unexpected wave of dizziness. A hand shot to his temple upon instinct while the other raised to counterbalance his moment of confusion.

The wave passed and the sea was calm again, water still sloshing at the very rims of his skull-made ship.

Faint images rippled across the water, blurred yellows and pinks, sharp greens and orange. Voices bubbled below the surface, never clear enough to be made out, but definite enough to be alive. Hitsugaya shoved his fingers through his hair, pressing hard on his scalp. The images splashed up and his ship rocked dangerously above murky waters. He swayed, one hand still held out for balance.

A creek of seconds and minutes dribbled by. He paid it no heed. The rising light beyond his windows made the water glimmer, but the images in his mind were no clearer than before; sounds still as muffled.

"Taichou~ Ohanyouuuu!" Matsumoto's voice twirled in with her plentifully-bosomed self and settled inches in front of his face. He frowned, weights of forgotten thoughts pulling down the edges of his lips. She'd obviously _not_ gotten the hint.

"Matsumoto..." The grumbling and growling of her stomach drowned out all other sounds.

"Ah! My stomach is calling for breakfast! _Off_ I goooo~" She sang and danced and sang and danced until she was no more. Hitsugaya watched her go with the self-same expression. The air shifted as he took a breath and veered towards the bathroom.

It was too hot. The water from the faucet sizzled and steamed as it ran over his blistering fingers. _Much_ too hot. Hitsugaya bit the insides of his mouth and kept them there. The shocks woke him from his morning blunder. The images in the murky waters were gone. He could at least think and sail clearly now. Sweat rolled off the walls and the mirror as he stepped into the burning rain. All the pain-receptors in his body seemed to have been turned on at once.

He only winced.

Fingers fumbling, he reached for the temperature knob and twisted it, hard. The water froze in moments, bombarding him with hail stones. He sighed. Now _this _was much better. Tingle after shivering tingle whispered up his spine. It was the only time he ever smiled. Cold felt good. Cold felt clean. Cold felt _alive_ to him as nothing else did. Hyourinmaru let out a breath the same time he did and it frosted over the walls and floor, engulfing him completely.

When the hailstorm finally blew over, he was dripping in ice. Glittering gemstones scattered across the floor as he pulled back the curtains and reached for a towel. The person that stared back at him through the transparent looking-glass was pleased. Nothing cleared his mind better than an ice-shower.

"Oh! You've showered...!" Hitsugaya rubbed the towel roughly over his hair, feeling it dry beneath the absorbent material. He nodded, the towel falling limp around his shoulders.

"I see you've managed to prepare breakfast without blowing up the kitchen. Good job, Matsumoto." He drew a piece of toast from the teetering stack on the counter and reached for the blueberry jam. Matsumoto seemed momentarily stunned at the compliment, but recovered faster than ever.

"Why thank you, Taichou!" She beamed, breasts bouncing with delight.

Hitsugaya gave a noncommittal "Hm," and bit into his toast. It was warm. The jam stuck to the roof of his mouth; he took another bite. Chewing slowly, he finally decided to try and sort out the myriad of badly developed photographs from the night before. The images swam up again, peering at him through the glazed top of the waters, still refusing to completely emerge. He took another bite, it was scratchy on the way down to his stomach.

Hitsugaya frowned, trying to put the events from the night before in some sort of chronologically acceptable order. Patrol, Ichigo, Warehouse - no/ Patrol, Warehouse, Fujiwara - no/ Fujiwara, Ichigo, Warehouse - no...

Letting out a low growl of frustration, he finished off the last of his toast. Matsumoto promptly set a cup of tea before him. He looked up at her; she gave him the smallest of smiles - sincere. The clunking piece of iceberg inside his chest melted ever so slightly. She always had that effect on him. God only knows why he still kept her around... maybe it was because somewhere deep inside him, a part of him _wanted_ that iceberg to melt just as badly as she did.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, Captain."

Guilt and fear played hop-scotch up her back while all the reassurances she'd ever taught herself slip-n-slide-ed down. The aftereffects of her actions were starting to catch up to her and she was out of breath.

A low hissing, then, the distinct rattling of a snake's tail. The tell-tales signs of Kobasen's clockwork arrival.

"Thankssss for the meal earlier today..." Saya clamped her eyes tight and didn't move. The voice continued on, "But it wassssn't really a _meal_, wasss it now? More like a sssssnack... just a bite, _bite_." The voice giggled, the sound slithered through Saya's ear and wrapped itself around her brain, squeezing tightly. She flinched.

The carrier of the hissing voice curled itself comfortably on her stomach, tail dangling over her waist. Its forked tongue wisping through the air, tasting her fears and relishing them. Saya's eyes relaxed, finally cracking one open, she regarded the snake on her stomach. _Distaste_.

She must have been the only Shinigami who _disliked_ her Zanpakutou so heartily.

_"Zanpakutou," the elder Shinigami paced before a group of eagerly listening students all dressed in blue or red robes, "are much like projections of your mind and soul. And thus, they take on the form that is closest to what each and everyone of _you_ are like inside here," he pointed at his head, then to his chest. The class waited on bated breath. _

_"That being said, the release of one's Zanpakutou marks the first stage of spiritual release and deeper understanding of _yourself_. The second step is the _communication_ between you and your Zanpakutou, and a mutual quest for knowledge. Only by embarking on this quest together can you discover planes of higher power and release; those are known respectively as your Shikai and Bankai." The Shinigami drew his own Zanpakutou and called him forth. The blade glimmered and unfolded into a huge scythe-like object, glinting dangerously in the light of the classroom. _

_The students ooh-ed and ahh-ed, muttering excitedly amongst themselves. _

_Saya lifted her head to glance once at the released Zanpakutou before lowering her head onto her arms and resuming her nap. Aizen-sama had taught her all this _ages_ ago. _

"But I have to admit... that Captain'sss memoriesssss tasssted so fressssshhhh and delicssciousssss. Sssuch a wonderous _sssssnack_. Isss there... _more?_" Her tail rattled; exicted. It tickled Saya's stomach.

"N-maybe... I don't know," Saya sat up. The snake chuckled its amusement, head bobbing up and down, swaying in front of Saya's eyes.

"Well if you don't make any more... _blundersssss_... then I won't have a chance to tasssste those memoriesssss anymore, now _would I?_" Its eyes glinted, the light splitting the air between them into miniscule chunks, sinking to the ground like technicoloured pebbles. Saya couldn't breathe, she opened her mouth to retaliate but shut it again like a dying fish. Her words were all trapped in soup-scud bubbles and floating away. The snake only sniggered and watched her suffocate, slowly, _slowy_.

"I-I..."

"_You... what...?_" Kobasen watched her struggle for words. Her tongue lashed out and popped all the bubbles, tail still rattling with apparent enjoyment at the Saya's silent convulsions. For five breathless seconds, she watched her master reach for invisible strands of thought before giving up and slumping back down onto the couch. The air flowed back into her lungs and she gasped at the sudden release. Peering up through shuttered lashes, Saya scanned the bredth of the room.

The snake was gone.

_"I look forward to my nexsssst meal... ssssweeetheart..."_

The kettle screamed on the stove, calling out its displeasure at being boiled. Matsumoto reached over, plucking it from the stovetop and quickly pouring the steaming water into the teapot, watching as the leaves inside swirled round and round and round.

"Oi Matsumoto... what's taking so long?"

The kettle slipped from her fingers, tumbling to the ground with a clatter, simmering the air as it spilled

"O-oi! _Matsumoto!_" She was shoved to one side. She stumbled, hip connecting painfully with the countertop. The kettle lay, lolling side to side, on the ground, silver seeping from the nose. Across the miniature lake of boiling water stood her Captain, wide-eyed.

"Oh... Taichou..." She blinked at them for the infinite space between passing seconds and then snapped out of it. "Taichou! I'm so sorry! I was spacing out, and the kettle slipped." Her waist bent of it's own accord, muscle memory kicking in. Kneeling down, she hurried grabbed a rag and began to clean up the transparent mess on the ground. The kettle still burned to the touch. Her reflection rippled in the lake of boiling glass, distorted and faint. But the woman that looked back up at her was not someone that she knew. She was _foreign_ in a way that Matsumoto could not understand.

A pair of rough hands smacked hers out of the way. Matsumoto toppled backwards at the sudden shock and watched as her Captain continued to wipe away at her mistake. His brow was furrowed and his expression was that of utmost annoyance, but the edges of his lips were not pulled down, rather they were pressed into a thin line. Never a good sign. _He was worried_.

His lieutenant's momentary lapse in attention had set off a series of alarm bells in Hitsugaya's head, tolling gongs and banging metal cans. Even as the nerves in his fingers began to show their displeasure at being exposed to such high temperatures, he continued to mop up the last of the spilled water. The rag was so loaded with crystaline mistakes-_her mistakes_-that it was heavier than pure lead in his hands.

He stood up and dropped the rag in the kitchen sink, turning on the water to let it soak. The sound of running water behind them masked the uneasiness in the air.

Matsumoto glanced at the clock behind Hitsugaya and blanched.

"Taichou! We have school today!" And without another word, she was gone. A moment later a loud thump followed by a series of crashes told Hitsugaya that she was currently getting dressed.

Rumpling up his hair in a digruntled fashion, Hitsugaya scoffed and dragged himself back to look for a suitable outfit for their 'first day of school'.

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_**Ending Theme:** "Please Stay With Me" YUI_

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**A/N**: Apologies for long wait. School and SAT's are getting in the way. Leave a quick **review**, please and thank you.


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